Book review: Presenting history

Presenting history: past and present by Peter Beck has recently arrived in the Library.

 A907.2 / 735803

Read the review by the Institute of Historical Research's Dr Ian Phillpott on the IHR's Reviews in History, followed by the author's response

This book takes a look at how "popular" presentations of history in the media "influence our understanding of and interest in the past and whether academic history (both in the teaching of and research in) fails to ignite interest in its subject matter due to practices and standardisations of presentations in the field" 

There are chapters on "popular" historians such as A.J.P. Taylor, Eric Hobsbawn and Simon Schama and on the "Hollywoodisation" of history through the glossy inaccuracies of TV series such as The Tudors and films such as Mel Gibson's take on the medieval Scottish rebel William Wallace in Braveheart. Beck also looks at the surge in popularity for historical fiction through the work of Philippa Gregory (The other Boleyn girl, The white Queen etc) and how Terry Deary has fired children s' interest in the past through his Horrible Histories series

CLICK HERE TO LINK TO THE LIBRARY CATALOGUE

Fact vs. fiction

In conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research's November conference Novel Approaches, their online Reviews in History has been comparing works of academic history with novels set in the same period

Julia Lovell (Birkbeck College, University of London)) compares Mao's last revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhols with Yu Hua's novel Brothers (Xiong di)

Click to read her REVIEWS

Mao's last revolution (Harvard UP, 2006) is available in SOAS Library at CC951.056 / 995530.
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Brothers is available at the British Library

Dr Jenny Benham (from the IHR) compares Jonathan  Riley-Smith's classic The Crusades: a short history with the Swedish bestseller The Temple knight by Jan Guillou

Click to read her REVIEWS

The Crusades (2nd edition, 2005) is available in SOAS Library at NB909.07 / 933682
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Try Foyles or Waterstones if you are intrigued by The Temple knight !